Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences

Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences

A novel strategy to enhance genome editing promises to increase the efficiency of making genetic improvements in a wide range of organisms, a new study suggests. The results could help boost applications such as developing better crops and treating genetic diseases in humans, Penn State researchers said.

The Center for Nanoscale Science, a National Science Foundation-funded Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) at Penn State, has been awarded a six-year, $15 million grant to continue research on materials at the nanoscale.

Inhibiting a nuclear receptor in the gut could lead to a treatment for a liver disorder that affects almost 30 percent of the Western world's adult population, according to an international team of researchers.

During the American Physiological Society's annual PhUn (Physiology Understanding) Week initiative, Penn State graduate students and faculty from the Huck Institutes' Intercollege Graduate Degree Program (IGDP) in Physiology partnered with a local elementary school to help first- and second-grade students explore basic concepts in physiology and better understand the study of how living things work.

Evolution kills people. Andrew Read, Evan Pugh Professor of Biology, has been saying so for years. Read works in the relatively new field of evolutionary medicine, specializing in infectious diseases. He is best known for his work on malaria, looking for solutions to the rising resistance in humans against antimalarial drugs -- and to a similar resistance against insecticides in the mosquitoes that carry the disease. His basic premise is that an overly aggressive, unscientific use of drugs is driving this evolution, and the evolution of many other pathogens.

The impact vitamin A has on newborns is virtually unknown, but Penn State nutrition researchers have published two papers that may provide a framework for future investigations of the vitamin and neonatal health.

Seizures and migraines have always been considered separate physiological events in the brain, but now a team of engineers and neuroscientists looking at the brain from a physics viewpoint discovered a link between these and related phenomena.

Matt Ferrari -- an assistant professor of biology and statistics at Penn State and a researcher in the Huck Institutes' Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics -- studies long-term trends in childhood infectious diseases.

Marta Byrska-Bishop -- a Ph.D. candidate in the Huck Institutes' Molecular, Cellular, and Integrative Biosciences program -- and Ross Hardison, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State, study genomics and gene regulation in relation to inherited diseases.

Emily Finch -- a Ph.D. candidate in the Huck Institutes' Immunology and Infectious Diseases program -- and Sandeep Prabhu, a professor of immunology and molecular toxicology at Penn State, study relationships between diet and disease.

The breakthrough of sequencing the human genome created a need for professionals with backgrounds in life and computer sciences to analyze vast amounts of biological data for developing gene-based drugs and treatments. In response, Penn State World Campus is offering a new graduate certificate in applied bioinformatics that will train a new generation of biomedical researchers in computational thinking and procedures.